Something that I found helpful when working on a new multi-layer 88 note Steinway piano sound for the Pa2x/ Pa800 was to have a plan that showed me exactly which sample was assigned to which key, the note frequencies, the octave numbers etc. This plan might be helpful to other forum members as well. Here is the picture so you know what I'm talking about. The bright yellow notes are the ones that have exact samples, then each of those samples is stretched by a semitone each way, with the exception of the B0 samples which have to stretch down by 2 semitones. Three new multisamples, Steinwaypp, Steinwaymf and Steinwayff are being constructed as you can see from the plan.
If you would like a copy of the .xls spreadsheet please send me an EMAIL (not a PM) by clicking on the EMAIL button below.
The Steinway piano project is something I wanted to do for a long time, and Reuben (John) pointed me in the direction of the University of Iowa Electronic Recording Studios, who have published 264 high quality stereo .aiff samples of their Steinway Grand Piano, each one up to 10 Mbytes in size. I wrote to the University and the department head Mr Lawrence Fritts has given consent to use these samples to make a Steinway Piano free give away to all Korg Forum members. Here is the copyright release statement he sent me in email on 12th Feb 2008:
Would anyone want a sound using 2.64 Gbytes sample RAM? I expect not, so the first thing I have to do is to reduce the total sample size down to 63 Mbytes by using various tricks of the trade that I am learning as I go. It will fit easily on a Pa2x but Pa800 owners will have a hard choice to make I'm afraid, the Steinway samples will be all you have space for.Lawrence Fritts wrote:The Steinway Piano samples were recorded in November 2001 by the University of Iowa's Electronic Music Studio department. http://theremin.music.uiowa.edu/MIS.piano.html The samples are made available for non-commercial use on the Korg Pa series keyboards, by permission of the department head, Mr Lawrence Fritts.
The reason for the large sample set is that it will be a three-layer sound (ie using different recordings for pp, mf and ff which will be velocity layered and cross faded using a technique Nikola taught me). It will use authentic samples for attack and decay, although I will be looping the tailpieces and then creating a software based sustain and release envelope so that I can get a longer sustain and delay effect than the original Steinway when needed. There will be several sound variants with different sustain, decay and EFX parameters.
Please don't hassle me for a completion date, it is a lot of work and I'm doing it as a hobby and I want to take my time to get it right. It is also the first time I've constructed a complete high quality piano sound from scratch, so I've been relying very much on Sharp's help behind the scenes on the best way to do it.
If anyone can recommend any ways to automate the sample editing/ preparation stages (i.e. topping and tailing at a 10 sec cutoff point, and reducing recording hiss, working with .aiff 16 bit 44.1 kSamples/sec on the PC) please send me an EMAIL. At the moment I am editing each sample individually and it takes a LOT of time to get it right!!
There will be a complete Wiki tutorial on creating the Steinway piano in due course. If people want me to, then I can publish follow-up messages and pictures on this thread as each stage of the project and the corresponding write-up is completed.
Best regards,
Rob
